Nisha Somnath, Ph.D.

Office

Dr. Nisha Somnath is a patent technical advisor at Smith Baluch LLP. Her practice focuses on helping companies and academic institutions develop their patent portfolio. Nisha has experience drafting and prosecuting patents, and conducting freedom to operate and patentability analysis. Nisha has worked on patent applications for a diverse range of technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, neural network, blockchain, database systems, intelligent lighting systems, wearable devices, and fintech applications. She has been granted limited recognition by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to prepare and prosecute patent applications under the supervision of a registered practitioner.

Dr. Somnath holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and a Masters in Aerospace Engineering from University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (UIUC). Her doctoral thesis was on computing liveness enforcing supervisory policy for a class of general petri nets. Nisha has extensive background in programming. She was a teaching assistant for graduate and undergraduate level courses that were programming based. She received the outstanding teaching assistantship award given by the Department of Computer Science at UIUC. She was also listed amongst teachers ranked as excellent by their students in Spring 2011 and Spring 2013.

Prior to joining the firm, Nisha was a Senior Patent Technical Advisor at Cooley where she co-chaired the Minorities Associates Group Chapter for the Boston office. Prior to transitioning to patent law, Nisha worked as a quantitative risk analyst at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Nisha has also been a volunteer instructor for a Girls Who Code (GWC) chapter in Chicago.